Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to communications, and more particularly, to downloading and using a communication application through a web browser, the communication application enabling users to conduct voice conversations in either a synchronous real-time mode, asynchronously in a time-shifted mode, and with the ability to seamlessly transition between the two modes.
Description of Related Art
Electronic voice communication has historically relied on telephones and radios. Conventional telephone calls required one party to dial another party using a telephone number and waiting for a circuit connection to be made over the Public Switched Telephone Network or PSTN. A full-duplex conversation may take place only after the connection is made. More recently, telephony using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has become popular. With VoIP, voice communication occurs using IP over a packet-based network, such as the Internet.
Many full-duplex telephony systems have some sort of message recording facility for unanswered calls such as voicemail. If an incoming call goes unanswered, it is redirected to a voicemail system. When the caller finishes the message, the recipient is alerted and may listen to the message. Various options exist for message delivery beyond dialing into the voicemail system, such as email or “visual voicemail”, but these delivery schemes all require the entire message to be left by the caller before the recipient can listen to the message.
Many home telephones have answering machine systems that record missed calls. They differ from voicemail in that the caller's voice is often played through a speaker on the answering machine while the message is being recorded. The called party can pick up the phone while the caller is leaving a message, which causes most answering machines to stop recording the message. With other answering machines, however, the live conversation will be recorded unless the called party manually stops the recording. In either situation, there is no way for the called party to review the recorded message until after the recording has stopped. As a result, there is no way for the recipient to review any portion of the recorded message other than the current point while the message is ongoing and is being recorded. Only after the message has concluded can the recipient go back and review the recorded message.
Some more recent call management systems provide a “virtual answering machine”, allowing callers to leave a message in a voicemail system, while giving called users the ability to hear the message as it is being left. The actual answering “machine” is typically a voicemail-style server, operated by the telephony service provider. Virtual answering machine systems differ from standard voice mail systems in that the called party may use either their phone or a computer to listen to messages as they are being left. Similar to an answering machine as described in the preceding paragraph, however, the called party can only listen at the current point of the message as it is being left. There is no way to review previous portions of the message before the message is left in its entirety.
Certain mobile phone handsets have been equipped with an “answering machine” feature inside the handset itself that behaves similarly to a landline answering machine as described above. With these answering machines, callers may leave a voice message, which is recorded directly on the phone of the recipient. While the answering machine functionality has been integrated into the phone, the limitations of these answering machines, as discussed above, are still present.
With most current PTT systems, incoming audio is played on the device as it is received. If the user does not hear the message, for whatever reason, the message is irretrievably lost. Either the sender must resend the message or the recipient must request the sender to retransmit the message. PTT messaging systems are known. With these systems, message that are not reviewed live are recorded. The recipient can access the message from storage at a later time. These systems, however, typically do not record messages that are reviewed live by the recipient. See for example U.S. Pat. No. 7,403,775, U.S. Publications 2005/0221819 and 2005/0202807, EP 1 694 044 and WO 2005/101697.
With the growing popularity of the world wide web, more people are communicating through the Internet. With most of these applications, the user is interfacing through a browser running on their computer or other communication device, such as a mobile or cellular phone or radio, communicating with others through the Internet and one or more communication servers.
With email for example, users may type and send text messages to one another through email clients, located either locally on their computer or mobile communication device (e.g., Microsoft Outlook) or remotely on a server (e.g., Yahoo or Google Web-based mail). In the remote case, the email client “runs” on the computer or mobile communication device through a web browser. Although it is possible to send time-based (i.e., media that changes over time, such as voice or video) as an attachment to an email, the time-based media can never be sent or reviewed in a “live” or real-time mode. Due to the store and forward nature of email, the time-based media must first be created, encapsulated into a file, and then attached to the email before it can be sent. On the receiving side, the email and the attachment must be received in full before it can be reviewed. Real-time communication is therefore not possible with conventional email.
Skype is a software application intended to run on computers that allows people to conduct voice conversations and video-conferencing communication. Skype is a type of VoIP system, and it is possible with Skype to leave a voice mail message. Also with certain ancillary products, such as Hot Recorder, it is possible for a user to record a conversation conducted using Skype. However with either Skype voice mail or Hot Recorder, it is not possible for a user to review the previous media of the conversation while the conversation is ongoing or to seamlessly transition the conversation between a real-time and a time-shifted mode.
Social networking Web sites, such as Facebook, also allow members to communicate with one another, typically through text-based instant messaging, but video messaging is also supported. In addition, mobile phone applications for Facebook are available to Facebook users. Neither the instant messaging, nor the mobile phone applications, however, allow users to conduct voice and other time-based media conversations in both a real-time and a time-shifted mode and to seamlessly transition the conversation between the two modes.